Yesterday’s Disunion in the New York Times has a timely piece written by Kate Masur, which provides additional perspective on whether African Americans served as soldiers in the early months of the Civil War. In it, she recounts the story of John Parker, who with three other slaves unwillingly fought for the Confederacy as artillerymen at the First Battle of Bull Run/Manassas. Masur writes:

Parker related his story to a Pennsylvania journalist after his escape to the North. It provides a useful microhistory perspective that further illuminates how both the Union and Confederate sides used African Americans in the early months of the conflict and what members of Congress were discussing in their floor debates on July 22 and July 23, 1861 (see Part 1 of this blog entry). Apparently, there were some slaveholders early on willing to arm their slaves and send them into battle. The May 10 edition of Civil War Emancipation discussed a proposal from a Georgia man to the Confederate Secretary of War to use small numbers of slaves as soldiers embedded with larger numbers of white troops who would keep them in line. Evidently, some Virginia slaveholders did something along these lines at First Bull Run/Manassas. It would help explain the July 15 edition of this blog, which featured slaves escaping to a Union navy ship near the mouth of the Rappahannock River because “the people on shore are about arming the Negroes with the intention of placing them in the front of Battle.” So it would seem that some African Americans were used by the Confederates at the First Battle of Bull Run/Manassas as soldiers in an ad hoc, piecemeal sort of way. This usage is certainly consistent with disorganized, improvisational nature of this engagement fought by inexperienced troops and commanders. It would be interesting to see if this limited and informal usage of African Americans in combat roles for the Confederacy occurred over the rest of the Civil War. In any case, a fine piece yesterday by Kate Masur in Disunion, both in terms of its insight and manner of presentation.

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About Donald R. Shaffer

Donald R. Shaffer is the author of _After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans_ (Kansas, 2004), which won the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship in 2005. More recently he published (with Elizabeth Regosin), _Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the U.S. Pension Bureau Files_ (2008). Dr. Shaffer teaches online exclusively (i.e., a virtual professor). He lives in Arizona and can be contacted at donald_shaffer@yahoo.com

2 Responses to Were There Black Soldiers in July 1861? Part 2

The John Parker story is interesting, but most likely untrue. Confederate batteries suffered relatively few casualties during the battle. Certainly, no battery suffered 20 killed as suggested by Parker. Where is the supporting evidence–other than Parker’s claims–to support the assertion that this incident really occurred? If more substantive evidence is available, Mansur should have cited it. Given she did not, I can only assume she has none. Call me a skeptic, but this smacks of poor scholarship on the part of Mansur.